Ohio St. completes regular-season sweep of Michigan St.

Greg Oden had 16 points and grabbed 11 rebounds and Ron Lewis
sparked a second-half spurt to lead No. 4 Ohio State to its
seventh straight win, a 63-54 victory over Michigan State.

The Buckeyes (20-3, 8-1 Big Ten), who pulled away from a tied
contest with 12 minutes to play, completed a regular-season
sweep of the Spartans to become the first road team to win here
in 15 games this season. The victory enabled Ohio State to
remain tied with Wisconsin for the top spot in the conference
standings.

"I thought our guys made some big plays down the stretch," Ohio
State coach Thad Matta said. "The adjustments we made from game
one I felt were pretty good for us.

"When you get in this environment, when you're playing a great
team like Michigan State, we told our guys in the last seven
minutes of the game, 'Hey fellas, we have to make plays.'
Fortunately, we were able to do that."

Although they nearly blew a 20-point first-half lead in their
last encounter last Saturday, the Buckeyes again came out with a
strong start. Oden scored seven points and Mike Conley Jr. hit
a 3-pointer as Ohio State jumped out to an early 10-2 bulge.

Michigan State (17-7, 4-5) stayed within striking distance,
thanks to Goran Suton, who scored 12 points in the opening half,
including seven consecutive for the Spartans, who trailed,
26-21, at the break.

Jamar Butler nailed a 3-pointer with 15:41 remaining to give
Ohio State a 37-30 lead before Michigan State's Drew Neitzel
capped a 9-2 burst with a basket from the arc with 12:20 left to
tie the score, 39-39.

However, Lewis scored seven straight points and Othello Hunter
added four to highlight a 16-7 spurt that gave Ohio State a
55-46 advantage with 5:06 to go.

"I thought Ron was big down the stretch," Matta said. "That was
the thing we wanted him to understand, to slow things down and
... letting it come to him, because he is explosive. If he can
get an inch, I think he can get by."

"I'm very disappointed in how we played, and I was impressed
with how they played," Spartans coach Tom Izzo said. "I just
felt like it was a game where we had too many guys that just
didn't play well enough. We were really proud of our effort and
performance down in Columbus, but we just struggled all day
long."

Conley and Butler scored 10 points apiece for the Buckeyes, who
had a 33-29 rebounding advantage.

Neitzel scored 24 points on 7-of-18 shooting - with 21 points in
the second half - and Suton had 16 with 10 rebounds for the
Spartans, who dropped their third straight game.

"That is a very good Ohio State team," Izzo said. "We probably
did decent on some of the things. Oden went a little crazier
but we did a decent job defending him.

"We held them to 37 percent shooting, but turnovers were poor
and the execution of a couple critical plays were poor. Against
a team like that, we're not going to win doing that."